To make a high-density recording on a flexible magnetic disk, a magnetic head must be contacted stably with the flexible magnetic disk. For this purpose, there has been proposed in Japanese Patent Publication Laid-open No. 9868/1986 a method which uses negative pressure to achieve a head touch. As shown in FIG. 10(a), when slanted head sliding members 2 and 3 are provided at the upstream side and the downstream side of a magnetic head 1, a negative pressure is generated between the head sliding members 2 and 3 and the flexible magnetic disk 4. As a result, as shown in FIG. 10(b), the flexible magnet disk 4 is attracted towards the head sliding members 2 and 3 to contact stably with the magnetic head 1. Thus, a stable head touch is achieved using a negative pressure, but this method cannot be used for double-sided recording.
As a method for double-sided recording on a flexible magnetic disk, Japanese Patent Publication Laid-open No. 1168/1987 discloses a method in which magnetic heads are placed on both sides of a flexible magnetic disk, and a pad is contacted directly against the flexible magnetic disk to cause the disk to touch either of the magnetic heads.
Since, however, in the method disclosed in Japanese Patent Publication Laid-open No. 1168/1987, the pad is in contact directly with the surface of the flexible magnetic disk, there is a danger of scratching the surface of the recording medium which may cause a drop-out. Moreover, if the flexible magnetic disk is set in position in a recording/reproduction device and the pad and the magnetic head contact the flexible magnetic disk at a same position for a long time, the flexible magnetic disk may undergo plastic deformation which will make the disk unusable.
Further, a frictional force applies when the pad is pressed against the flexible magnetic disk and disappears when the pad is removed which, when the recording operation is switched from the front side to the back side or vice versa, causes a substantial change in load and hence perturbation in servo operation. Therefore, stable recording is not obtained immediately after switching the recording surface. In addition, a mechanism which linearly moves the pad to touch the flexible magnetic disk tends to have a large inertia, which is slow in moving speed and cannot provide instant switching of recording surface.
With a view to obviate all of the prior art defects of recording methods, it is a primary object of the present invention to provide a double-sided recording method which can provide instant switching of recording surface with no contact with a flexible magnetic disk.